CCL proposal (quotes)

Not making it to the ZIG, someone sent me some private mail indicating
that Ralph's proposed single digit after '?' change got accepted
and possibly no-one mentioned my counter double quotes suggestion.
Fair enough, if you don't turn up you have less influence.

Just thought I would have a last bash at a compromise with the idea
that if the CCL regexp is changing, may as well try and get as many
changes in as possible in one hit rather than change it again later.

To repeat the problem I currently have with the CCL regexp is that
you cannot specify '?' or '#' as literal text (ie, release their
special meaning). So even if there is now allowed only to be a
single digit after '?', while the spec is being changed is it worth
allowing double quotes ('"') to be used to release special chars
anyway? This would allow 'find all terms starting with "#"'.
At present, you cannot do this with the CCL regexp. Normally
regexp's have release mechanism ( \ for regexp-1 I believe).
CCL uses " as a release mechanism so seemed the natural thing
to use in the CCL regexp (rather than \ which in CCL has no
special meaning).

It seems an oversight not to allow searching for serial numbers etc
using patterns.

    #41434
    #53423

If people have to change their CCL regexp implementation anyway,
I would rather do both changes at the same time and make it possible
to search for all possible characters.

I wonder also if the Z39.58/CCL regexp attribute needs to be renamed
to indicate that it no longer conforms to CCL. I don't actually have
a copy of Z39.58, but if its anything like the ISO version of CCL
the spec is so woolly that it isn't funny! The formal grammar is
given by examples only, and the examples contradict themselves
in places! (Mind you, the copy I have of ISO8777 is pretty old now
so maybe its been improved.) Not stressed, just thought it was the
correct time to at least ask the question.

Alan
-- 
Alan Kent (mailto:ajk@mds.rmit.edu.au, http://www.mds.rmit.edu.au/~ajk/)
Project: TeraText Technical Director, InQuirion Pty Ltd (www.inquirion.com)
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Received on Sunday, 5 May 2002 22:10:23 UTC